The hospital was fuller than usual, and the atmosphere was tense. Dr. Isles' lab was, of course, in the heart of the plague ward, which was cordoned off from the rest of the hospital. As the monitor checked their credentials and unlocked the door to let them in, Jane felt a shiver go down her spine, as if someone were watching her go into this forbidden place, but when she turned around there was nobody there.
They walked down the hall side by side, Dr. Isles looking as cool and unruffled as if she were walking from the living room to the kitchen. Jane, unused to the hospital atmosphere and set on edge by the dozens of rooms filled with victims (thankfully sedated), was taken aback by the other woman's composure, until she remembered that Dr. Isles was actually a robot. It was probably a good thing, she thought to herself, sighing: any person who could look that calm in the face of the plague had probably suffered some kind of trauma. Or was a total psychopath. At the same time, though, it was creepy how perfect she was. Jane watched the doctor out of the corner of her eye, noting her even stride, the perfectly calibrated sway of her hips that betrayed the speed with which the robot walked. It was incredible that anyone could walk that fast in heels, Jane thought to herself, but she was in pretty good shape herself and she increased her pace until she was again walking side by side with the robot.
After a moment, Dr. Isles cleared her throat (why did she do that? how did she do that?) and asked Jane, wryly, "What are you looking at?"
"Oh! Um, nothing. I mean, sorry." Jane blushed deeply, first out of embarrassment and confusion and then out of anger at the smirk on the doctor's face. "Uh, your office should be just around this corner..."
"I know. I memorized the map."
"So what do you need me for?" At that the doctor stopped, turned to look directly at Jane.
"You were sent to meet me. It's polite to accept the hospitality of your hosts. I am known for being polite; that's part of the reason I was sent."
"Really?" said Jane, extremely dubious; Dr. Isles was one of the most brusque people-sorry, robots-she'd ever met.
"I am in your government's building, using their equipment. I am respecting their wishes." With that, she turned to the door of the lab, which was now in front of them. "Would you mind letting me in?"
Jane fumbled the key card, still distracted by this insight into the doctor's thought processes, but finally she unlocked the automatic door and the lab lay before them. When Dr. Isles stepped forward, Jane could have sworn there was a change in her, something about her posture (which had been impeccable) or her aura, or something: she looked at home, if a robot could be said to have a home. Jane stood nervously by the door as Dr. Isles explored the lab, unsure of whether or not she should go.
"Um, can I take you to your hotel? It's getting late..." Jane was sorry she'd spoken; the doctor stopped what she was doing and fixed Jane with a perplexed stare.
"I won't be going to any hotel. I am staying here, in the lab."
Jane was taken aback. "Why? I mean, where?"
"There should be an office in this lab; I have asked for a cot to be placed there. Not," she said, turning away, "that it's any of your business."
"Right," Jane muttered, trying to stifle her questions: did robots need to sleep? If Dr. Isles was trying to be polite, why had she explicitly refused the government's hospitality? Why had nobody told her that Dr. Isles wouldn't be staying at a hotel? None of these were really things she thought she could politely ask the doctor, however. She had just opted for saying nothing when the lights flickered and went out. Almost immediately, Dr. Isles retrieved a flashlight from her briefcase and turned it on, giving the lab an eerie, haunted feel.
"It must be the storm," said Jane. "The power should come back on soon, the backup generators at least." They waited for several minutes in the gathering silence, however, Jane all too aware of the sound of her breathing alone in the room until she noticed that Dr. Isles made a very faint, almost undetectable hum, as if she were a computer whose processor was functioning correctly. It was reassuring, in a way, and Jane found herself holding her breath so that she could hear it, but then the light was moving, and she could hear Dr. Isles' heels clicking quietly across the tile, and then Dr. Isles was standing right next to Jane, the flashlight pointed tactfully down at the floor.
"I don't think the power is coming back on," she said, her voice surprisingly soft in the silence. Without the distraction of background noise, Jane could appreciate the nuances of the robot's voice: it was slightly gravelly, as though she didn't often speak. Again Jane had to remind herself that what she was hearing was not actually a human talking, only the approximation of one.
"You may be right."
"What would you suggest doing?"
"What, you need my ideas?" Even in the dark Jane could feel Dr. Isles' reproachful glance. "Okay. Well...let's wait a little while, see if the lights come back on."
"Okay." The doctor was silent for a moment, but she didn't move away from Jane, who was racking her brain trying to think of acceptable things to talk about. She couldn't talk about the robot's upbringing, because she wasn't totally sure what that consisted of in robots; she didn't have any idea what a robot would want to do in her free time. Besides, she was worried that personal questions would sound rude at this early point in their (hopefully brief) relationship.
"What do you think is going on with this plague?"
"You mean A99?"
"What?"
"A99 is the ICD classification of unspecified viral haemorrhagic fever, which is what this appears to be."
"I have no idea what that means."
"It's a code, Ms. Rizzoli. It means we don't know what's causing it."
"Oh." Jane is quiet for a minute. "When do you think you'll know?"
"I have no idea." The doctor's voice, which had been stern before, softened a little bit, and she laid a hand on Jane's arm. They were quiet for a while, and then she spoke again, her voice returning to its usual formality. "We should get you out of here, Ms. Rizzoli. If the power is completely out, and I believe it is, the ventilation will have ceased and you may have trouble getting adequate oxygen." Jane had trouble responding for a second; she was distracted by Dr. Isles' hand on her arm. When she said nothing, Dr. Isles pressed her arm delicately, as if she had performed tests to see exactly how much pressure a human arm could take, how much felt good. "Ms. Rizzoli? Are you all right?"
At this question Jane jumped, came back to herself. "Yes! Yes, I'm fine!" She pulled herself away from the doctor as if shocked, turned towards where she thought the doors were. "If you...shine the light over here, I'll try and open the doors." She began feeling for the crack without waiting for the doctor's reply, but after a moment the flashlight's beam illuminated the lab's door. Jane put her weight into pulling the door apart from its mate, but she had no luck, which was strange: she was strong, and the doors were designed to be pushed open in a crisis. She turned to Dr. Isles to comment on this fact, but before she realized what was happening the doctor was beside her again, this time reaching past her to place small hands next to Jane's. Jane had just enough time to pull her arms away from where they were entangled in the doctor's before the robot was pushing, and then the door was creaking reluctantly, and some imperfection in the track was snapping, and the doors were rolling back and air rolled into the lab, cool against Jane's flushed skin.
"Thank you," she said after a minute, and, in the darkness, she could hear Dr. Isles respond quietly,
"It was not a problem." If she hadn't known better, Jane would have said that the robot was breathing hard, but of course she wasn't breathing at all.
They were silent for a long moment, standing there in the half-dark facing each other, and then Jane spoke again. "Well, I guess...I'll go see if I can find out what's happening with the power in this place."
"I will come with you," Dr. Isles responded smoothly, and for once Jane didn't bother questioning the doctor's impulses; she was mostly glad that she would have Dr. Isles with her if she needed to open any more stuck doors. After a second she realized what she was thinking and was shocked at herself. "I want to complain to the management about this door," Dr. Isles continued. "You should have been able to open it yourself. I am a robot trained for science; I am not intended for acts involving brute strength. I might have broken a finger." With that she walked out the door, paused for a moment as if consulting a mental map, and turned left. Jane hurried to follow her.
The plague ward was even creepier in the darkness than it had been earlier in the day, although there was still almost no noise from the patients. As they walked on, they could hear a low keening coming from one of the rooms, as though one of the affected had been startled awake, but after a moment there was the murmur of a comforting voice-probably a nurse, Jane thought-and the keening ceased. It felt, after that voice faded, as if they were walking through a graveyard, the intense sedation the patients were under becoming a kind of simulated death. If it wasn't death itself, it was certainly its precursor, this long, troubled sleep: most of the patients in this ward had only a few days left to live. Many of them would never wake up again.
"It is a tragedy," said Dr. Isles, her voice echoing, as though she had been reading Jane's thoughts. That was the only thing she said until they had passed out of the ward and into the main hospital.
"Where do you think we should go?" Jane asked her.
"Perhaps we should go see the director of the hospital," Dr. Isles said after a moment. "I believe her office is on the second floor." She turned toward the stairway on their right, and Jane followed.
She walked behind the robot, and this time she was grateful for the dark; she could not see anything of the doctor. She was beginning to get a headache from the confusion the doctor inspired in her. On the one hand, she was annoyed by the doctor's precise, bland affect, but on the other hand she was fascinated. And there was no denying that absurd reaction she'd had to the doctor's touch back in the lab. If only she knew what it meant. In the dark, she didn't have to look at the doctor, or worry about the blush that had started rising as soon as Dr. Isles had stepped up behind her and leaned forward to put her weight into pushing the door open. She listened to the sound of the doctor's high heels on the floor, and let herself be hypnotized by it.
As they stepped out of the stairwell onto the second floor, however, the lights flickered on. Dr. Isles sighed a sigh that was not exactly satisfied, but continued walking towards the director's office.
"What are you doing?" Jane said. "The power's come back on."
"I know," said the doctor over her shoulder, "but I still want to ask about that door."
"Okay," said Jane. "But I'm going home."
At that Dr. Isles stopped and turned around, and fixed Jane with the full power of her stare. "Why?"
"Because it's late, and I'm very tired, and I find this hospital creepy." As soon as she said it Jane knew she would regret it later, but the doctor simply shrugged and turned away.
"Very well. Have a good night, Ms. Rizzoli."
A/N: Sorry for the slow update! It's the middle of the semester and I probably won't be able to update any more frequently than this, but I hope to get through all ten planned chapters before Christmas. :)